Cal Performances at Home is much more than a series of great streamed performances. Fascinating behind-the-scenes artist interviews. Informative and entertaining public forums. The Cal Performances Reading Room, featuring books with interesting connections to our Fall 2020 programs. For all this and much more, keep checking this page for frequent updates and to journey far, far Beyond the Stage!
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Beyond the Stage
From Costume Design to Curriculum Design: Dr. Alison Billman Talks Intersections of Art and Science
From Costume Design to Curriculum Design: Dr. Alison Billman Talks Intersections of Art and Science
Arts, Science, and the Opportunity to “Become”
By Krista Thomas, Cal Performances’ Associate Director of Communications
Though Cal Performances is foremost a performing arts organization, we are part of one of the prominent research universities in the world. The value of science and the arts are inextricably linked, and the places they intersect can be the impetus for immense discovery. Today, we spotlight Dr. Alison Billman, Early Elementary Curriculum Director & Senior Researcher at Lawrence Hall of Science, a musician, a trained fiber artist, and a beloved member of the Cal Performances community.
Dr. Alison Billman grew up in an “extremely musical family.” Throughout her childhood, her father played bass, trombone, and cello in local jazz bands and orchestras. After serving during WWII—when he played in an Army band while in the 82nd Airborne—he used the GI Bill to go back to school and become a music teacher. He steeped his children in music early on. As the oldest of seven, Alison was the first to learn an instrument and was introduced to the violin by age five!
“Eventually, since there were seven of us, we could make up our own string quartets. We had cello players, viola players, violin players… We were also all students where my father was a music teacher, so music was all around us” she said.
For college, Billman attended Syracuse University and, because she had both a love of musical and visual arts, opted for a degree in fashion design with an emphasis on costume design for theater. Billman was especially fascinated with the extensive historic costume collection the department had accumulated and took the initiative to catalog and organize the costumes for the school.
As an extremely curious person, Alison’s interest in how things work led her to tackle subjects that melded the worlds of arts and science. “Working as a costume designer involves more than sketching looks. There are environmental elements to consider, too,” she said. “For example, when a costume is under stage lights, there’s an interaction with the fabric and light that involves reflection and absorption. For one of my independent studies, I designed an experiment with different fabrics, gels, and lighting to determine, from a physics perspective, what fabric would make the best costumes in various conditions.”
Though Billman did work in fiber arts (designing with natural or synthetic fibers like fabric or yarn) post-college, after having children, she wanted to pivot to a career that felt more secure and so became an elementary school teacher. That’s when she began to really see how the arts and science complement one another in expanding one’s understanding of the world.
Dr. Billman at a music recital
“When I taught first grade, music was the way I started and ended every day because music builds community. Six-year-olds haven’t learned to be scared singing in front of people yet so they’d all join in,” she said. “I also used music to reinforce what we were learning. I’d coordinate little musicals for us and would usually write the lyrics to align with what we were learning, like ‘Every Day Is Earth Day’ and ‘Dragon Stew.’ It all contributed to a very arts-rich community in my classroom.”
In addition to music, Billman found writing to be a unique way to help young students on their journey of discovery. “I knew that the kids at that age were just trying to make sense of the world. The questions they’d ask me were wonderful, but the traditional teaching materials I used to answer those questions weren’t so great,” she said. “I decided that, if the kids were motivated to find out more, I could support that by simultaneously encouraging reading and writing. So, I began collecting their science questions and we’d work together on writing letters to university professors. We’d ask our pen pals things like ‘What makes an apple an apple?’ The professors would get such a kick out of the letters, and the kids were so motivated to get answers that their reading and writing thrived.”
Billman was so captivated by the way the arts and sciences overlapped to help children learn that she decided to, yet again, allow her curiosity to lead the way, and she enrolled in a doctorate program in education psychology at Michigan State University.
“In my first interview at Michigan State, they asked me what I wanted to do, and I said I wanted to fly,” she laughed. “What I meant was I wanted to get out there, be part of the world, find out new things. And in that process, I knew then, as I know now, I have a responsibility, too. I’m very privileged to be working at the intersection of new knowledge. As my curiosities push me, it has always been my hope that maybe they’ll help other people, too.”
After finishing her doctorate, Billman began working at UC Berkeley, where she has been the last 15 years. In her current position as Early Elementary Curriculum Director & Senior Researcher for the Learning Design Group at Lawrence Hall of Science, Billman focuses on marrying science and the humanities by “developing an integrated science and literacy curriculum for primary grade students and designing the informational texts that support reading to learn in primary grades.” Her curriculum, which is largely multidisciplinary, even includes a physical science unit in the context of puppet-theater engineers!
While working at Berkeley, Billman has also kept the arts close by performing in a local singing group and even organizing and directing a fun, inclusive singing program to build community among Lawrence Hall of Sciences staff—or, as they’re known on stage, “The Hallitones.” Billman is also a frequent attendee and donor of Cal Performances, where she draws on her holistic experience to enjoy what’s presented on stage.
“Certainly, my professional background influences the way I watch performances. I’ve always been fascinated with the physics part of sound: the vibrations created when an artist pulls their bow across strings, what it is to play something ‘in tune.’ And I do enjoy evaluating the costumes and looking at how each element interacts—the fabrics, the lighting, the sound—seeing where that balance lies,” she said.
One of the most significant benefits of watching the arts for Billman is related to her lifelong journey of gaining and facilitating new understanding. “Engaging with music builds a capacity and a need to listen in a new way. And that’s because it is such a profound method of communication,” she said. “As a lover of the arts, there are times when I challenge myself to think how I would represent a concept visually, or in a musical composition. Sometimes there are articles and books we write that are full of important concepts, but they don’t trigger the understanding we want because people’s ability to get that information is limited to their brain’s interaction with the words on the page. When I’m watching performances like those of the Mark Morris Dance Group, and feel the incredible power of all they’re communicating, there are times I think words just don’t do it.”
Whether your interest is in science, music, writing, or even puppet engineering, Billman sees a common thread in the opportunity for learning and growth, if only we trust ourselves to explore.
“If you look at each day, the number of interactions you have with anyone and anything, it’s all an opportunity to learn. There’s always something to learn, something that can push us forward to ‘become,’” she said. “Living offers us the opportunity to ‘become’ everyday. Letting my curiosity drive me as I have, it has caused immense growth… It’s also been exceptionally fun!”
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The Role of Cal Performances’ Major Gifts Associate
The Role of Cal Performances’ Major Gifts Associate
A Role Supporting the Arts You Love
Video filming and editing by Tiffany Valvo, Cal Performances’ Social Media and Digital Content Specialist
Cal Performances Major Gifts Associate Jocelyn Aptowitz has always loved theater, and now loves the added element of getting to directly make what we all see on stage possible through her work with Development (fundraising). Jocelyn breaks down some of the daily tasks, from calling donors and arranging their tickets and parking, to the underlying, big picture work of helping those with a passion for philanthropy to find initiatives and performances they really connect with so that they can have the greatest impact. “At Cal Performances, a lot of what we do is connect people who are kind enough to give us money… with the things they are most passionate about,” Jocelyn said.
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The “Musical Mandate” of Groundbreaking Cellist Zlatomir Fung
The “Musical Mandate” of Groundbreaking Cellist Zlatomir Fung
At 23 years old, cellist Zlatomir Fung has won international recognition for his profound musicianship.
By Krista Thomas, Cal Performances’ Associate Director of Communications
Over the past few years, he has made history as the youngest (age 20) musician, and first American in four decades, to win First Prize at the International Tchaikovsky Competition (Cello Division); he has received the Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship and an Avery Fisher Career Grant; and he has toured in the United States, Europe, and Asia with renowned orchestras and as a recitalist. This Sunday (November 20), Fung offers the Bay Area an exciting opportunity to experience his virtuosity firsthand as he makes his Cal Performances debut.
Equally noteworthy to his 2019 victory at the Tchaikovksy competition are the nearly two decades of extreme dedication and attentiveness to his craft that preceded and enabled this particular accomplishment. Fung began playing the cello at age three and, showing early promise as a thoughtful and natural musician, participated in his first competition at only 11 years old.
“From the beginning, the most important aspect of the competition was my relationship with my progress and motivation,” said Fung. “As a very goal-oriented individual, competitions gave me a strong sense of purpose and focus for my improvement as a musician.”
As reported by Musical America, Fung’s attachment to the cello flourished substantially around this time. When he moved with his family to Boston at age 12, he was newly inspired by the local musical scene and began for the first time to seriously consider a career as a musician. With the change of scenery came fresh opportunities for deepened engagement, including enrollment in a New England Conservatory prep school program. As he fantasized about a future performing on grand concert stages, his fascination with great artists such as Edgar Moreau motivated him to build and refine his craft.
Fung continued competing into high school, earning prestigious awards that included top prizes at the 2016 George Enescu International Cello Competition, 2015 Johansen International Competition for Young String Players, 2014 Stulberg International String Competition, and 2014 Irving Klein International Competition. He was also recognized as a 2016 US Presidential Scholar for the Arts and earned the 2016 Landgrave von Hesse Prize at the Kronberg Academy Cello Masterclasses.
In 2017, he went on to study cello performance at the Juilliard School under the mentorship of Richard Aaron and Timothy Eddy. It was at the end of his second year at Juilliard that Fung competed in the 2019 International Tchaikovsky Competition, one of the most important international classical music competitions, which is held every four years to reward and reveal new talent among musicians ages 16 to 32 (cello division).
Though he was already something of a musical sensation at the time, Fung’s record-breaking win was a game-changer for his career, “open[ing] several doors… regarding personal connections, publicity, and international exposure,” he shared.
Following this win, requests for recital engagements from performing arts presenters rapidly increased, and Fung was faced with the challenge of balancing schoolwork with both music competitions and performances. Though a transition from competitions to recitals often happens more gradually and later in a performer’s career, for Fung, the overlapping engagements have proven a natural complement to one another.
“In many competitions I competed in, recital rounds were an essential part of the experience. They also happened to be my favorite part: I had more control over the repertoire and the possibility of crafting a varied experience for the audience and the jury,” Fung said. “My mentality during competitions and my mentality in other performances and recitals are mostly the same [in that] I strive to create the most immersive and transporting musical experience possible for the audience.”
This “immersive experience,” which serves as a hallmark of Fung’s performances, is well-documented, and speaks to his technical mastery as well as his acute interpretations and artful programming. The young artist has been described as having a “rare… Midas touch: he quickly envelops every score he plays in an almost palpable golden aura” (Bachtrack). Fung has also been lauded for his “impeccable intonation and thoughtful phrasing” (Baltimore Sun), which create a richness of performance likened to “his own musical mosaic” (Benicia Herald).
Ahead of his Cal Performances debut, Cal Performances Executive and Artistic Director Jeremy Geffen shared his own excitement about the opportunity to host Fung. “Introducing the next generation of artists Cal Performances’ audiences didn’t yet know they couldn’t live without has been a hallmark of our series for decades,” said Geffen. “Though we’re always excited to support artists on their ascent, I am particularly thrilled to present Zlatomir Fung, an artist in whom virtuosity, intelligence, preternatural emotional maturity, interpretive insight, and the ‘x factor’ all find their nexus!”
Fung is admittedly “particularly passionate about programming” and, though a true lover of classical repertoire, creates layers of meaning by pairing canonic pieces with newer works. For his Cal Performances recital, Fung has crafted an eclectic and engaging program that matches cello showpieces by Beethoven and Dvořák with an arrangement of Ives songs and two contemporary works: Judith Weir’s Unlocked, which was inspired by American folk songs, many of which were contributed by Black prisoners in Southern jails, and a cello sonata with distinct blues sonorities by George Walker, the first Black composer to win a Pulitzer Prize for Music.
Of his meticulously crafted programs, Fung said, “I enjoy bringing lesser-known works together with staples from the repertoire. The ability to shape the arc of an entire concert experience—a whole afternoon or evening with an audience—lends recitals a more authorial feel and gives [me] space to create an entire world for the audience to fall into.”
Though Fung greatly appreciates the “tremendous honor” of his past competition awards, he is ultimately focused on the “larger musical mandate,” and the opportunities afforded—particularly through recitals—to shape our relationship to important works.
“The awards are only the beginning,” Fung said. “The actual work and meaning lie in the art itself. As a young musician starting out, I want to bring an energetic, exuberant, and original voice to my work. One day, I hope to have done enough meaningful musical work to make my awards only a footnote in my biography.”
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“Human and Machine”: Technology and Creative Expression
“Human and Machine”: Technology and Creative Expression
The machines that have worked with—and against—artistic expression and communication.
Featuring 2022/23 Illuminations artists Steve Reich, Sō Percussion, and Michel van der Aa, plus Kinetech Arts.
In this first of three videos expounding on the 2022/23 “Human and Machine” Illuminations theme, we asked Illuminations artists and thought leaders about how technology has and continues to shape their artistic process, output, and creativity.
Transcript
Jason Treuting (Sō Percussion):
These drum machines get faster and faster and faster, and the drummer’s job is to play with them until it’s just physically impossible.
Steve Reich:
But what’s amazing is this process, this journey of starting in unison and then gradually coming apart, informing these all kinds of counterpointed relations, some of which are rational, some of which are very irrational.
Michel van der Aa:
There’s so much technology around us, you know, on our phones and our watches, and for me, it would feel very artificial to not allow that on stage.
Daiane Lopes da Silva (Kinetech Arts):
I always joke that I’m the human and he’s the machine.
Weidong Yang (Kinetech Arts):
What can I do? Yeah.
Jason Treuting (Sō Percussion):
I feel like Dan Trueman’s “neither Anvil nor Pulley” encapsulates so many of the ways we think about the kind of organic approach and the technology approach. This piece is in five movements and the first, third, and fifth are these folk songs. And Dan’s a hardanger fiddle player, and they’re very organic and very fluid. We have choices over what sounds we’re playing, and in the two and four slot are these large pieces that are really technology driven. I’ve started to think about them as the second one is a little bit like humans with technology, you know, we are in control of this technology and using it to play music together and it’s helping us do some things that we couldn’t do. Otherwise, we’re also responding to it. It’s really kind of fluid. The fourth one, I feel like that gets more into a human against technology and, depending on the night, it’s hard to know who wins. I think the humans win in the end, you know, but these drum machines get faster and faster and faster and the drummer’s job is to play with them until it’s just physically impossible. And so then you have a choice. Are you gonna try to keep playing with this machine, or are you gonna just do your own thing and, for me sitting in the drummer spot, if I have the energy, I try to do my own thing and come out, you know, come out on top.
Eric Cha-Beach (Sō Percussion):
What I was thinking about in terms of maybe one of the times where we did a little bit more exploration of what the boundary was was in Nathalie Joachim’s piece because the samples we’re playing on the sampler pad are her voice. So, hypothetically, she could sing all of those things; or, hypothetically, you could program them all and just have the computer play it back perfectly; or someone could play it at a MIDI keyboard.
And I think the reason we settled on the SPD is that it was a combination of her sound world in her head and then our skills as percussionists. So we’ve just trained to move our hands in a particular way and we can trigger those samples using the skills that we have as percussionists, and what, we what we get to actually does sound different than triggering those samples on a keyboard or just having it MIDI-mapped.
We start to drum and we start to groove with the way that we drum, and now her voice samples are coming out in a, in a groove that’s just different because it’s being played by drummers. So that, to me, was sort of letting the technology and the execution of that technology find a different musical end result. Not that, you know, very similar, but different feeling results could have been done in other ways.
Daiane Lopes da Silva (Kinetech Arts):
There’s some things that I did with technology that I couldn’t just do myself. It really opens up your brain to many different possibilities. And this happened many, you know, many, many years ago. Already Cunningham was doing that. He was using technology to create movement that he wasn’t, he would never ever thought about. And I think that technology does that a lot.
Weidong Yang (Kinetech Arts):
Like we joke about before we start, that she’s the human, I’m the machine; and when we work together, I often come up with the technologies, so the things that we want to explore. As an engineer, as a scientist, I often get carried away with those gadgets, but it’s usually, it’s the have to wait to get to her hands, and then I start to say, ‘Oh, that’s kind of a nuts’.
Daiane Lopes da Silva (Kinetech Arts):
In the beginning when we started Kinetech Arts in 2013, we were also excited about these new toys, these new gadgets, and everything became about the technology, and I was like, ‘Oh my God, we are all like—I’m looking from the outside in the lab, and we’re all like a zombies,’ like I was like, this doesn’t feel right. This is not—you feel like we need to really go deeper into, ‘What is that about the technology?’ I’m always thinking about, ‘Where is the poetry?’
Michel van der Aa:
So I started as a composer, but my works became more and more visual; there were more and more things that I couldn’t express with just sound or with music, and I started making notes in my scores about the way the musicians should look, that they should mind movements, that they should play back and notice what lighting, about staging, so my scores began more and more visual in a way.
And I thought, okay, I’m gonna take a year off in 2002 and study film in New York at the Film Academy so I can, I can sort of add that visual layer to my work and in order to say things that I can’t say with my music.
Technology always should be a tool to express, you know, the core idea of the piece. Then I started thinking about what kind of vocabulary do I need to bring this piece across to the audience? And do I need it, you know, multimedia or can I just use a string quartet and a voice, you know? So it really depends on the idea and not the other way around. That’s a very important point for me.
So I think what’s really interesting in Blank Out is that there’s a scaled model of a house on stage. This model is filmed by a small 3D camera rig and the woman sort of moves objects around, changes walls, and kind of deconstructs the house while she’s deconstructing the memory of that particular day in the 1970s that the opera centers around. What I really like about that is that the audience understands it’s a very high-tech opera in a way, but it’s also very—you kind of look behind the screen. You see the, you look behind the technology, you see how the film is made, and this is really what I like, that the film itself becomes the protagonist in the piece.
Steve Reich:
In 1965, I was and a lot of people were working with tape loops, tape—physical loops that went around plastic loops of tape. They went around and around and around repeated. Instead of using electronic sources for music, I’m interested in human speech because it’s human and because it’s melodic occasionally—“it’s going to rain”—and if you loop it, if you repeat it, that becomes clearer. And the meaning doesn’t really disappear. Actually, it gets intensified.
I had been told by a friend, ‘There’s an incredible Black Pentecostal preacher preaching on Sundays at Union Square in San Francisco. Why don’t you come down and record him?’ ‘Okay.’ And indeed it was incredible, and he was preaching about Noah and the flood.
Now, this is 1965, not too long after the Cuban Missile Crisis, when I and millions of other Americans were afraid that they might just all go up in radioactive smoke. So the idea of national disaster was hovering like a cloud at that, at that period in time. So to hear about Noah just, you couldn’t avoid making associations between the story of Noah and the end of the world at that point.
I brought the tapes home and I listened to them and I started actually going to piano and trying to write down as if I was taking notation at a music school of the melodies of the preacher’s voice, Brother Walter’s voice. I thought, ‘Oh, I know what I’m going to do. I’m going to create a loop situation where you’re going to have two loops and it’s gonna go ‘it’s gonna it’s gonna it’s gonna it’s gonna rain rain rain.’’
So I had two inexpensive tape recorders on my studio in San Francisco. And I made two of these loops as exact as I could make them, and I put them on the two machines, and I just happened to press the start button simultaneously and I had headphones on. And miraculously, and you could say by chance, and you could say by divine gift, I would say the latter, but you know, I’m not going to argue about that. The sound was exactly in the center of my head.They were exactly lined up.
Now, mathematically, the odds are against that, staggeringly so. And I just paused, and all of a sudden I began—the sound began as it was going, and then it started moving to the left, and then down my left arm and then down my left leg and then of course the floor, and pretty soon there’s a reverberation and then there’s a kind of various cans, and finally ‘it’s gonna, it’s gonna, it’s gonna, it’s gonna.’
I’m thinking, ‘Well, that’s nice.’ But what’s amazing is this process, this journey of starting in unison and then gradually coming apart and forming these all kinds of counterpointal relations, some of which are rational and some of which are very irrational.
So I proceeded to finish the piece and the crucial question was, ‘Okay, it’s a process. How long does it take?’ Too long, it’s a bore; too short, you don’t hear it. You’ve got to get it just right. So there’s always some aesthetic judgment that enters into even something that’s strict process.
‘It’s Gonna Rain’ created a new technique for making music which I call phasing. You can call it constantly variable canons, too. And I did another piece called “Come Out” and then I thought, ‘I’m not going to spend the rest of my life like a mad scientist trapped in a laboratory making phase pieces, and people can’t do this, but it’s so great, but people can’t do this, but it’s so great—and I went back and forth like that for months.
And finally I said, ‘I’m going to be the second machine. And I know what I’m going to do. I’m going to get it in unison with the tape recorder. And then I’m going to try to move ever so slowly—and that’s the virtuosity is to do it slowly. One sixteenth note ahead, hold, second sixteenth note ahead, until I finally get back into unison.’
And I tried it and I found, ‘Wow, I’m not like the second tape recorder, but I can do it, and doing it is a whole new way of performing.’ And the question was, ‘Can there be another player instead of another tape loop?’ And I was fortunate with being able to work with Arthur Murphy who’s no longer with us who was a friend of mine from Juilliard where I studied, and we found two pianos and ‘Look, Ma! No tape.’ This can be done by musicians.
And that piano phase in 1967 is the first piece in my experience that is completely modeled on a machine technique where two tape recorders or any other motors that are not locked together simply drift apart. And you’re trying to create that situation with two people, which is not, has no musical history of trying to do that before.
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“Human and Machine”: Beyond Our Hopes and Fears
“Human and Machine”: Beyond Our Hopes and Fears
Should society fear what’s to come?
Featuring computer scientist, composter, artist, and author Jaron Lanier; Head of Growth at Machine Intelligence Research Institute and Cal Performances’ Illuminations “Human and Machine” Artist Partner, Colm Ó Riain; and UC Berkeley Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and Visual Artist, Ken Goldberg. Video created by Cal Performances’ Director of Education, Campus & Community Engagement, Mina Girgis.
In this third video expounding on the 2022/23 “Human and Machine” Illuminations theme, subject matter experts discuss our history with technological evolution as well as the potential risks and benefits of technology that increasingly exhibits human-like characteristics.
Transcript
Jaron Lanier:
Scientific progress can only happen from humility. Like, if you can’t see your ignorance, you have no hope of being a scientist because obviously you’ve just absolutely shot yourself in the foot.
Colm Ó Riain:
As we progress, we should consider perhaps expose, make it more transparent the level of agency that we’re willing to give to our technology.
Ken Goldberg:
Essentially, he or she achieves the goal, which is to create something autonomous. At that exact moment, that autonomy also creates a dynamic for the creator where there’s a loss of control.
Colm Ó Riain:
I think considering technology and machines through a lens of hopes and fears may not be the most useful. But if we go up another level, I think it’s useful to consider what we’re fearful of and many people are. When the car came in originally, we were a horse-riding society and people were scared. Arguably the internal combustion engine was as opaque to those people, to that society, as machine learning algorithms are art to ours, and then society had to adapt. How do they adapt? They adapted with various coordination technologies and arguably we have to have another technology to respond to that one.
And always we’re concerned, are we giving away control or is this something positive? And then what are we fearful of? Are we fearful about the right things, or the right set of things? So, overall, the fear is very useful if we can get above it and not react to it is my, I would claim.
Jaron Lanier:
I mean we have to remember that science is not done and might never be done, that the part of the world that we can describe scientifically is significant and important. We can use it to make technologies, that’s wonderful.
If we really understood the world scientifically, there would be no disease. If we really understood the world scientifically, there would be no global warming, you know. Our ignorance is profound as well. And and we have to remain honest about that. And I’m a little puzzled by how difficult it is often for people to accept that, and I think it’s just because we have too much ego in science.
Ken Goldberg:
Now, the question you just asked about why do we have machines, why do we want machines, is really ancient. And I mean, when I hear that, I think back to the very earliest machines of using a rock to be able to basically, you know, kill something, to, you know, to hunt. And it’s also true for pounding and preparing food for the most part and scraping bark off of things, right, throwing, throwing stones at things. Those are all machines in some form and then you evolve that up through levers and wheels and all these things, and they’re all to enhance our reach, our ability to do more and achieve more.
Jaron Lanier:
There’s a perennial debate about whether musical instruments or weapons have served more as drivers of basic technologies. The cliche is that it’s weapons, but that might be a bit too dark. There are a lot of examples where musical instruments seem to have come first. Bells were cast before the technology was turned to the use of cannons and then guns. Silicon Valley was founded by the company Hewlett Packard, and its first product was actually a music synthesizer for Walt Disney’s Fantasia. So Silicon Valley actually started as an instrument town.
Colm Ó Riain:
So one question I hear a lot is ‘Can machines be creative?’ And it brings us to, ‘What is human?’ ‘What is the human machine interface?’ ‘Where is that border?’ The institute with which I worked, the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, has for many many years talked about the need for human-aligned AI and exploring what alignment looks like. How do we produce a smarter-than-human AI that has a positive benefit on humanity and the world?
Ken Goldberg:
The interesting promise of artificial intelligence and robotics is that those are the most lifelike of our machines. Those are machines—rather than just a wheel or a lever, this is something that actually starts to take on humanlike characteristics, it behaves like we do, thinks like we do. And those, that ability is both very compelling—for the same reason, wouldn’t it be wonderful to have something that could think and solve these problems that we face? But at the same time, the consequences can be enormous if those things got out of hand.
Colm Ó Riain:
If we have this, if we can successfully insert creativity into the algorithm or into our technology or into our hybrid, I think it would have to have a significant amount of hope programmed in. What does that look like?I think it would be have to be massively open to diversity, to ideas to come from all corners.
One of the problems with our current machine learning algorithm is that it doubles down on ideas that work initially, so all the other ideas get pruned away. That’s not a great scenario for creative solutions to problems down the line that we haven’t imagined. So one of the ways that we could be more creative is to bring that along with us, bring all the other ideas, don’t prune them away, bring on the different voices, the different ideas with us as we go forward into humanity. And my feeling is that using the arts, integrating arts into the center is vital to that.
Jaron Lanier:
I still, I still feel a sense of hope. I don’t think it’s fully rational to succumb to cynicism despite everything. I actually think that there are a lot—most people, not all but most people, are reasonably sane, reasonably well-intentioned, reasonably competent, and just caught up in crap that’s overcomeable.I think most of us are like that. None of us are perfect, but I think most of us have hope. It’s hard to remember that when you look at some of the events in the world. But I still feel that, in balance, one can be hopeful, and so if one can be hopeful, then one should be. And then, you know, you just try to do your best and I think it makes sense. I’m not ready to hang it up yet.
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“Human and Machine”: The Instrumentalist & the Instrument Maker
“Human and Machine”: The Instrumentalist & the Instrument Maker
“The instrument becomes a channel, too, and that’s the sense in which it’s alive.”
Featuring computer scientist, composter, artist, and author Jaron Lanier; and Cal Performances 2022/23 Illuminations artists Sō Percussion and Kristian Bezuidenhout. Video created by Cal Performances’ Director of Education, Campus & Community Engagement, Mina Girgis.
In this second video expounding on the 2022/23 “Human and Machine” Illuminations theme, we asked Illuminations artists and thought leaders about their relationships with the makers of their instruments.
Transcript
Jaron Lanier:
I sort of feel like if instrument makers ran the world, everything would just be smooth and it would be like, everything would make sense.
Adam Sliwinski (Sō Percussion):
I think the audiences at Cal performances will see how, for us, technology is part of a fluid spectrum of soundmaking and experimentation.
Kristian Bezuidenhout:
He says famously, ‘The piano should break,’ you know… Beethoven was wanting to sort of stretch the instrument to its maximum capacity and limits.
Jaron Lanier:
Well, so this is a question: ‘Why are we not just singing?’ ‘Why do we have instruments?’ And there are a few reasons for that. I mean, in a way you could say instruments are the ancient autotune because people don’t sing that well, that’s one. And I think, in a sense, we can think of musical instruments as being like masks in that if the voice would be the fully unmasked person then the instrument is the masked version, which takes away and gives at the same time.
Adam Sliwinski (Sō Percussion):
The way that we think about expanding the color palette of sound through percussion, I would say for all of us comes from two things: One, which is just the sort of natural experimentation that we all intuitively go about. When audiences come in to hear our shows, they immediately relate to the idea of ‘oh, you can try doing this with that, you can try doing that with it.’
The other thing for us is that our lineage as a percussion ensemble is not only to play drums and those kinds of instruments together, but it comes from artists like John Cage and Pauline Oliveros and many others who explicitly—Edgar Varèse—explicitly wanted to expand the resources of music coming out of the concert hall and orchestra culture and those things using percussion to just explore all kinds of ways of making sound—intuitive playfulness, the kind that anybody who’s never even heard of John Cage could get excited about.
Kristian Bezuidenhout:
Does Mozart invent this or does the piano tell him to do this. And when does he change that? Does he change it? Is he happy with it for 15 years? Mozart sets the piano on this path of incredible explosive change. I think arguably one of the most remarkable moments of the stars aligning for Mozart is the E-flat major piano concerto K271, the ‘Jenamy’ or ‘Jeunehomme,’ and this is a piece I think is a fantastic example of Mozart realizing the sort of unfulfilled potential of every element in the recipe: the piano, the orchestra, the kind of stylistic aesthetic language that he sort of transcends and uniquely invents overnight in the concerto form as well.
And I think it’s safe to say that the Stein piano of the late 1770s—that is the source of inspiration for this—unlocks a kind of unparalleled new level of creativity in Mozart. And it’s really fascinating to see that in a piece like the C Minor “Fantasy” of Mozart, he unlocks kind of coloristics, sonic potentials in the instrument that were undreamt of I think and that really appealed to Beethoven.
I think probably people felt that Mozart was onto something and then Beethoven, in his kind of eccentricity and madness, takes it so many steps further, you know. He says famously, ‘The piano should break’…. Beethoven was wanting to sort of stretch the instrument to its maximum capacity and limits, almost to the point of grotesque ugliness, something that Mozart never really ever does.
What is the relationship between the instrument builder and the composer?
Jaron Lanier:
Musicians will talk among ourselves and say, ‘Oh my God, this maker of whatever it is, drums or guitars or something, they’re so amazing!’ Like, ‘Here,’ you know, ‘try this thing like, oh my God, this is incredible. This goes beyond anything I’ve ever played.’ And we’re like, ‘Oh my God, this person must be like some sacred guru or something.’ Then you go visit them and not always but almost always, the attitude of the instrument maker is kind of like very workaday and concrete, like they’re car mechanics. Like, ‘I just want to make things work here. This is a job. I’m gonna do the job well,’ and that’s it, you know, end of story.
It’s very simple and we’re like, ‘Wait a second, but you’re this transcendent guru and you’re just talking like you’re like a mechanic.’ It’s almost always the case that the best instrument makers are incredibly humble and incredibly workaday. I tend to think they just don’t realize how special they are.
Kristian Bezuidenhout:
Part of the sort of einsteilung of the best builders, the sort of mindset of these people in the 1780s, 1770s, especially, is they’re going to bed at night thinking, ‘Okay, what’s going on now? What is it that my instrument needs to offer that’s gonna really set it apart from the competitors? And what if Mozart—I’ve heard he’s really good—what if he walks in the door tomorrow and comes to my workshop? What do I need to impress him with?’ And I think these people like Stein at that point in the 1770s, they just have a sense of what’s in the air and the kind of zeitgeist and the demands for a piece of equipment that’s going to be on the best level for portraying and bringing this new music to life.
Jaron Lanier:
I have always wanted computers to get as good as instruments, you know. You’d like a computer to have this feeling of transcending what it is and most people in computer culture want that to happen, but they want it in the sense that they want the computers to come alive and become creatures. The way they wanted to happen, it’s sort of like womb envy where it’s like, ‘Oh, we’re creating life,’ and the way it happens with instruments is different.
Most great musicians come to believe that they aren’t like sort of ego sources of music, but rather they’re channels. And in that sense, the channel—the instrument becomes a channel too, and that’s the sense in which it’s alive. Whereas I think there’s too much of a problem in technology of like, ‘I’m the inventor. I’m the great entrepreneur. I’m this. I’m the great scientist. I’m the great hacker,’ or whatever and so there’s this ego in it, and then they want the computers to have egos too, which is I think exactly the wrong thing. That’s really not not what you want.
And I think it’s been a bit of a problem in a lot of music technology lately where, at least to my ears and to my sensibility, a lot of the tools people used to make music are a little too imposing where it’s like, well, this is the way you do loops and this is how you autocorrect this and this is where you get your library of sounds, and it’s almost like the musician becomes a consumer of a product instead of a creator or it gets to be an awfully blurry distinction.
And I know, you know, it’s not my job to be just judgmental about how other people make music, so in a way I immediately feel that I shouldn’t have said that, but there is this kind of weird thing of like, do you want your instruments to come alive as he goes or as channels? Right? And I think channels is the better way and that’s what we’re missing in the digital world.
Jason Treuting (Sō Percussion):
If I really like thinking of this triangle, this instrument maker-composer-performer triangle, and one thing I feel like we try to complicate in that relationship is the way ideas are transmitted from composer to performer. I think oftentimes when a technology is made, let’s say the piano as a technology, you kind of define a way that that music is notated, and then the composer can transmit those ideas to a performer, and it’s a really elegant language and a really deep language and a really facile and fast language, but it’s also not the only language, and as soon as you make a language, you kind of inherently leave out all these other ideas.
And so, in the music that we’re playing in Cal Performances next season, of the five or six different composers we’re working with, all of that music was transmitted in all different ways. Even within a piece of music, there are different ways that an idea is transmitted. Of course, we read notated music in a Western classical tradition, but orally transmitting ideas, talking about trial and error, the workshop process, all kinds of different notated processes—for me as a composer, I try when possible to say things like, ‘Let’s have a sound that sustains’ as opposed to saying, ‘I need an organ,’ or, ‘I need a string quartet,’ you know; or, ‘Let’s have a bright sound,’ which could mean symbol or pipe or triangle or, you know, harp. Like, trying to open up the way you classify instruments feels like it’s a really easy way to open doors, and actually the array of music we’re playing next year is really wonderful like that.