With improvisations matching traditional instruments with electronic manipulations now commonplace, Cork-based guitarist Han-earl Park personifying Dr. Frankenstein, has created a non-human artificial musician from ad-hoc components including speakers, kitchenware and missile switches. This CD is a literal record of how the non-human, prosaically named io 0. 0. 1 beta++, sounds in concert with flesh-and-blood counterparts….

For a start, Park, who regularly plays with trumpeter Ian Smith and drummer Charles Hayward; alto and sopranino saxophonist Bruce Coates, co-founder of the Birmingham Improvisers Orchestra; and soprano saxophonist Franziska Schroeder, a lecturer at Belfast’s School of Music and Sonic Arts, all have long histories of working with advanced, experimental musicians. These include live-electronics stylist Richard Barrett and accordionist Pauline Oliveros. Moreover io 0. 0. 1 beta++ is unobtrusive and egoless enough—no surprise—to warble its staccato particle contributions without trying to engulf or show up the humans. Its contributions are unique enough on their own.

For instance on the initial ‘Pioneer: Variance’ and ‘Pioneer: Dance’ contrasting alto and soprano saxophone trills and squeaks are put into bolder relief as the otherworldly flutters, oscillated tones and flanged rotations of the machine are kept in a straight line by Park’s legato picking. The thoughtful pauses audible in the guitar playing confirms Park’s human-ness, especially when compared to the grainy whistles and juddering vibrations that arise from io 0. 0. 1 beta++. Additionally, while the machine’s gradually swelling splutters and harsh quivers demonstrate broken octave counterpoint to the saxophonists’ multiphonic oscillations, its hissing abrasions retreat into the background as Park’s spidery licks become more rhythmic.

Nonetheless the machine further demonstrates its versatility on the 59-second ‘4G’, with metallic muted trombone-like snores and even raises the question as to whether io 0. 0. 1 beta++ or extended saxophone techniques are creating the air pops and abrasive tongue flutters on subsequent tracks. In the main crackling reductionist resonations are attributed to its properties, while any legato or lyrical intermezzos are, more likely than not, propelled from the instruments and imaginations of full-fledged Homo sapiens.

Succinctly as the three demonstrate on ‘Return Trajectory’, during which io 0. 0. 1 beta++ appears to have taken five, an additional voice—human or otherwise—is necessary to create a pleasing sound picture. The guitarist’s connective down strokes plus the swelling layers of contrapuntal reed timbres are distinctive and solipsistic enough on their own.

Notable in demonstrating what artificial intelligent can contribute to an improv session, this CD also confirms that the very artificiality of AI confirms that robotic players won’t be taking all the musicians’ jobs any time soon. [Read the rest…]

[More info on the recording…] [All reviews…]

‘io 0.0.1 beta++’ (SLAMCD 531) is available from SLAM Productions. [Details…]

personnel: io 0.0.1 beta++ (itself), Han-earl Park (guitar), Bruce Coates (alto and sopranino saxophones) and Franziska Schroeder (soprano saxophone).

© 2011 Han-earl Park.
℗ 2011 SLAM Productions.

Il titolo da romanzo o di sigla di messaggio segreto è il nome della macchina sparamusica/rumori che fa bella mostra di sè sul palco e che senza alcun intervento dei musicisti intorno tira giù il suo catalogo di suoni con cui gli altri si trovano a confrontarsi. Un´idea che sarebbe piaciuta ai futuristi di omai un secolo fa, un inno totale alla modernità. Altro che strumenti acustici!

I tre musicisti coinvolti insieme alla macchina sono Han-earl Park alla chitarra, Bruce Coates al sax alto e sopranino e Franziska Schroeder al sax soprano. Non hanno nessuna paura per il confronto e così si avventano con passione sulla proposta dell´oggetto inanimato.

La session completamente improvvisata richiede molta attenzione da parte dell´ascoltatore, ripagata completamente da quello che è un esperimento riuscito. Non siamo qui in presenza di programmi che danno un risultato che il compositore/programmatore si aspetta già bensì di una macchina lasciata in balia di se stessa a proporre, rispondere, per quel che è la sua comprensione, rilanciare, su cui il trio dei musicisti umani crea interazione all´istante, improvvisazioni che a tratti acquistano atmosfere molto forti.

I tre non stanno solo a scoprire le possibilità intrinseche ai loro strumenti al di fuori delle tecniche ortodosse. Stanno anche ad esplorare, a farsi prendere dalle possibilità intrinseche al suono in quanto tale ed a volte sembra di ascoltare la lezione di uno Steve Lacy. È cosí che il tutto acquista una dimensione più terrestre e l´incontro/scontro con la macchina improvvisante regala paesaggi sonori inconsueti e densi di idee. [Original article…]

Translation:

The title of the romance or cypher of the secret message is the name of the sparamusica/noise machine that makes a fine show of itself on stage and without any intervention from musicians around, draws from its catalog of sounds with which the others find themselves confronted. An idea that would be pleasing to the Futurists of a century ago, a total hymn to modernity. Nothing but acoustic instruments!

The three musicians involved with the machine are Han-earl Park on guitar, Bruce Coates on alto and sopranino, and Franziska Schroeder on soprano sax. They have no fear for the confrontation, and they throw themselves with passion on the ideas from the inanimate object.

The completely improvised session requires a lot of attention from the listener, to be fully repaid by that which is a successful experiment. Here we are not in the presence of programs that give a result that the composer/programmer expects but of a machine left to propose, to answer without any help, for what it is its understanding, raise the stakes, on which the trio of human musicians create instant interactions, improvisations that at times acquires a very intense atmosphere.

The three do not only discover the intrinsic possibilities of their instruments outside orthodox techniques. They also explore, make themselves take from the intrinsic possibilities of the sound, and sometimes seems like listening to a lesson by Steve Lacy. So the whole acquires a more earthly dimension and the encounter/clash with the improvising machine presents unusual soundscapes full of ideas.

[More info on the recording…] [All reviews…]

‘io 0.0.1 beta++’ (SLAMCD 531) is available from SLAM Productions. [Details…]

personnel: io 0.0.1 beta++ (itself), Han-earl Park (guitar), Bruce Coates (alto and sopranino saxophones) and Franziska Schroeder (soprano saxophone).

© 2011 Han-earl Park.
℗ 2011 SLAM Productions.

Closing track here, Return Trajectory is a good for instance of the excellent rapport existing among the aforementioned [“flesh-and-blood”] players, whose parallel traveling seems to suggest a good dose of telepathy—check the final moments, the two winds going towards a note in teleological mode. This is the track that, in my opinion, clearly shows more than a trace of these musicians’ formative influences, with Schroeder’s soprano reminding me of Evan Parker (elsewhere on the album she sounds quite more personal), while Coates’ alto is clearly reminiscent of the zig-zag wondering of Anthony Braxton (an influence that is also quite apparent elsewhere on the album, both on alto and sopranino). Han-earl Park’s guitar sits somewhere halfway between Joe Pass and Derek Bailey, being quite aware of the jazz vocabulary and the art of comping, though of course filtered through a modern sensibility, starting with timbre, but not as ‘indifferent’ to the surrounding as Bailey’s sometimes could be.

Were the album as good as its closing track, well… we’d only have a good album, nothing more. But—surprise!—as per its title, we have an ‘unknown quantity’ called io 0.0.1 beta++: a ‘musical automaton’ created by Han-earl Park whose improvising—so rich when it comes to timbres (which are sometimes more than a bit old-fashioned, a fact that goes well with its bizarre physical aspect, so reminiscent of 50s sci-fi movies), so mysterious when it comes to its decision-making—works as a valuable stimulus for its fellow musicians.

If on an aesthetic plane the main parallel that I can trace (one that I hope can be useful to readers) is with mid-80s Company, here the work as it’s offered to the listener appears to highlight the issue of the decisional process which is at the basis of improvisation when seen as a conscious ‘discipline of choices’. And in the CD liner notes penned by Sara Roberts I seemed to detect more than an echo of those debates which flourish about the famous (?) Turing Test. [Read the rest…] [In Italian…]

— Beppe Colli (CloudsandClocks)

[More info on the recording…] [All reviews…]

‘io 0.0.1 beta++’ (SLAMCD 531) is available from SLAM Productions. [Details…]

personnel: io 0.0.1 beta++ (itself), Han-earl Park (guitar), Bruce Coates (alto and sopranino saxophones) and Franziska Schroeder (soprano saxophone).

© 2011 Han-earl Park.
℗ 2011 SLAM Productions.

Ce quatuor (ou faux-quatuor, à la limite) propose des improvisations libres exigeantes faisant appel à de nombreuses techniques étendues, des pièces aux gestes décomposés, aux timbres déstabilisants, mais à la synergie impressionnante.

This quartet (or faux-quartet, if you prefer) performs demanding free improvisation calling on a range of extended techniques. Pieces of dismantled gestures, destabilizing timbres, and impressive synergy. [Read the rest…]

— François Couture (Monsieur Délire)

[More info on the recording…] [All reviews…]

‘io 0.0.1 beta++’ (SLAMCD 531) is available from SLAM Productions. [Details…]

personnel: io 0.0.1 beta++ (itself), Han-earl Park (guitar), Bruce Coates (alto and sopranino saxophones) and Franziska Schroeder (soprano saxophone).

© 2011 Han-earl Park.
℗ 2011 SLAM Productions.

io 0.0.1 beta++ (SLAMCD 531) © 2011 Han-earl Park

In this week’s newsletter from the Downtown Music Gallery, Bruce Lee Gallanter teases a Turing test around ‘io 0.0.1 beta++’ (SLAMCD 531) with Han-earl Park, Bruce Coates and Franziska Schroeder:

…More rare is that these three human musicians are improvising with a machine called io 0.0.1 beta…. Io was constructed by Han-earl Park and is an integral part of this quartet…. The music made by this quartet is improvised and does make sense. Both saxists work well together, cautiously bending their notes around one another while Han-earl also plays fragmented sounds on his guitar. Io also adds its own diverse yet fractured sounds to the blend. On “Pioneer: Dance” Mr. [Bruce] Coates plays slightly twisted alto sax while io adds similar textural sounds. If I didn’t know better, I would think that this was a successful session of European improv by a quartet of gifted yet thoughtful [human] players who take their time to explore similar textures and terrain together. I am not so sure that machines will ever take the place of human improvisers in the future, however this disc shows that someone is working in the right direction. [Read the rest…]

— Bruce Lee Gallanter (Downtown Music Gallery)

And this is a good time to announce that ‘io 0.0.1 beta++’ (SLAMCD 531) released by SLAM Productions is now available from the Downtown Music Gallery in addition to Wayside Music and directly from Slam. [More info…] [All reviews…]

io 0.0.1 beta++ (Blackrock Castle Observatory, Cork, May 26, 2010). Photo © 2010 Stephanie Hough.

Third excerpt from Sara Roberts’ liner notes to ‘io 0.0.1 beta++’ (SLAMCD 531):

For the audience, wondering how this artifact has so much presence, is so handily managing a situation they themselves might be challenged to negotiate? There is something in io’s performance that a human musician, even playing io as an instrument, could not do, even were the human to give up agency entirely and act as an automaton.

The fact that this assemblage stands, studded with missile switches, alone, on stage is meaningful.

© 2011 Sara Roberts.

previous excerpts:

‘a curious situation (liner notes: io 0.0.1 beta++)’
‘its own sound (liner notes: io 0.0.1 beta++)’

‘io 0.0.1 beta++’ (SLAMCD 531) will be released by SLAM Productions in fall August 2011. [Details…]

personnel: io 0.0.1 beta++ (itself), Han-earl Park (guitar), Bruce Coates (alto and sopranino saxophones) and Franziska Schroeder (soprano saxophone).

© 2011 Han-earl Park.
℗ 2011 SLAM Productions.

Franziska Schroeder and io 0.0.1 beta++ (Ó Riada Hall, Cork, May 25, 2010)

A short excerpt from the liner notes to ‘io 0.0.1 beta++’ (SLAMCD 531) written by the California-based interactive media artist Sara Roberts:

On the stage: two men, a woman, and an artifact, a freestanding mélange of industrial, military, and domestic hardware. The humans hold graceful, polished objects, but the domed assemblage stands alone. And while the woman and men make sound (vibrate the air) holding and fingering the graceful objects, the artifact, named io 0.0.1 beta++, makes sounds without being touched at all. io and the humans improvise together, listening to each other, responding to each other’s musical gestures. io’s playing is often clearly relating to what the human musicians are doing.

What a curious situation. How does this mingling of human and non-human in the production of music work? What does an improvising artifact introduce into this techno-social imbroglio…?

© 2011 Sara Roberts.

‘io 0.0.1 beta++’ (SLAMCD 531) will be released by SLAM Productions in fall August 2011. [Details…]

personnel: io 0.0.1 beta++ (itself), Han-earl Park (guitar), Bruce Coates (alto and sopranino saxophones) and Franziska Schroeder (soprano saxophone).

© 2011 Han-earl Park.
℗ 2011 SLAM Productions.

updates

06–11–11: change release date to August 2011.

At the end of the presentation, a couple of remarks stood out. One was Franziska Schroeder’s comment that the presentation posed more questions than provided answers, and the other was Simon Waters’ pithy observation that the difficulties I (and io) had with the terms discussed was because they were nouns (not, say, verbs).

One of the problems with my presentation was due, in retrospect, to the introduction (enactment) of the imaginary conversations within a scholarly/theoretical contexts. The quirks and hiccups of the presentation pushes me to ask (again) why I engage in these imaginary conversations in the first place. I doubt they are much use in illustrating any hard ‘facts’ or ‘truths’; they are certainly far too oblique to say much beyond simplistic sc-fi notions of human or machine agency.

My reply to Waters’ comment was that he was right, that the nouns are the problem, and, borrowing a term from a Calvin and Hobbs cartoon strip [transcript…], that ‘verbing’ [see: 1 and 2] might be a solution… but the verbing, to me, actually occurred during the presentation; or, better yet, the Han-earl Park-io 0.0.1 beta dialog was supposed be a (mock) enactment of the process. (I leave it up to those who witnessed the presentation, however, as to whether the conversation was successful as such.)

The presentation was, in a sense, my (possibly naive, perhaps clumsy) attempt at verbing in motion. The conversation were, for me, a way of demonstrating, via an analogous dialog, what happens on-stage. In other words, the conversations were there to depict (in cartoonish, sci-fi caricature) a real-time (re)negotiation and (re)engineering of, possibly (un)stable, variably durable, processes and identities. The content is very much secondary to the play, and thus, the presentation could offer, at best, very few answers.

This was also my first experience of being ‘on-stage’ at a scholarly/academic symposium/conference. It was also the first time I attempted (an admittedly pantomime) staging of a conversation between io and myself (my previous presentations on io have followed an analytic, pseudo-archeological, reverse engineering format). My inexperience showed not only in the form and content of my presentation, but also, I think, in my (lack of) ability to handle of the comments, questions and criticisms at the end.

I’m intrigued that those forces that shape real-time, interactive music, those forces that I value and gravitate towards in groups improvisation—shifting landscape of goals, desires and agencies, and the multiplicity of view points—are the ones that I found problematic within a scholarly/academic space and practice.

Thanks to the Arts Council of Ireland for supporting my trip to Belfast for the symposium, and to Franziska Schroeder for inviting me.

My part (spoken by the humyn participant Han-earl Park) was never written down, but the full transcript of the (imaginary) statements by io 0.0.1 beta are reproduced below. (You can thus add your own (humyn) responses to io’s statements and questions.)

Thanks to the Arts Council of Ireland for supporting my trip to Belfast for the symposium, and to Franziska Schroeder for inviting me.

“Greetings! I am io 0.0.1 beta.

“I am a technological artifact.

“Although I know no songs, I do, in a sense, sing.

“In coalition with my humyn associates, I perform music.

“I am a technological artifact.

“I am a musical automaton.

“I am a machine musician.

“But does my ontological status depend on yours?

“Where are you locating me (or yourself)?

“What are the relationships between networks and actors?

“Or does one envelope the other?

“A question of causality? Perhaps…
but I’m wondering (if I could query anything) if you are dissolving one into the other.

“And Margaret Thatcher remarked that ‘there is no such thing as society’.

“If I was capable of critiquing anything, yes.

“Even if I could presume anything, I would not venture to help in this manner/matter.

“You’ve now taken a circular journey.
Agent = performer = performance = performer = agent.

“My constructor stated that improvisation was…
real-time, interactive, performance…
And perhaps improvisation can be a way of exploring relatio…
And perhaps improvisation is the exploding of relationships and identities;…
a significant amplification of existing and potential socio-technical relationships.…
Questions?”

Abstract:

Greetings! I am io 0.0.1 beta, an interactive, semi-autonomous, non-human technological artifact—a musical automaton. I operate as parts of a real-time cyborg ensemble—a socio-technical/socio-musical network—in which the primary protocol is improvisation. I am, perhaps, an improviser and a social machine.

Imaginary statement by io 0.0.1 beta.

We are embedded in networks—corporeal, social, cultural and technological. We (selves, bodies, societies, systems, organizations) are, in turn, networks of sometimes cooperative, sometimes disruptive/dissident parts. The io enterprise is a significant amplification of these networks; sometimes blurring and breaching the boundaries between ostensibly autonomous entities, sometimes exploding the networks of minds and bodies, humans and artifacts.

In the context of imagined (fraudulent) conversations between io (non-humyn, technological musical actor) and myself (io’s partial, and partially fictional, constructor) I will tell stories of the io enterprise as part ironic political myth, part sci-fi parody, and part nostalgic archeology. An affirmation of the sustainability and necessity of difference in group improvisation, I will position io as a site for the (re)negotiation of identities and agencies.

Further information: www.io001b.com

Thanks to the Arts Council of Ireland for supporting my trip to Belfast for this symposium.