Please look at the linked document–Fluxus Workbook [https://www.thing.net/~grist/ld/fluxusworkbook.pdf] Perform one (or more) of the pieces. (Disclaimer: Don’t perform any that put you or others in danger please…). Describe the choices you made in performing the composition and how the composition and your choices relate to concepts discussed in this week’s class/readings (Russolo, Tzara, Attali, and LaBelle). I would pay special attention to the way in which the body is foregrounded, metamorphosed, effaced, extended, etc. What do these new configurations of the body suggest as possible futures? And how do these event scores bring about (or not) certain futures for certain people?
I performed opus 25, playing with acoustic objects in my mind according to a predetermined system. I considered Tzara’s writing when performing the opus and I was thinking specifically about “Is the aim of art to make money and cajole the nice nice bourgeois”. I thought about how the art that I was making is likely heavily influenced by systems controlled by the “bourgeois” so to speak, making my art not original but more of a reflection of my environment. This predetermined system shaped my performing of the opus, making me doubt the originality of my art. I then decided to perform the opus again, but in a style suited for the dada movement. This time around the performance felt much more original, still influenced by a predetermined system but less likely to cajole the nice nice bourgeois. It felt similar to Russolo’s prediction of increased dissonance in harmony with an increase in time, moving closer to noise music.
As a revision to this post I will be interpreting it differently. I think my original interpretation of the prompt was not what the creator had in mind. With my new interpretation of the prompt I assembled several water bottles and filled them with different levels of water and hit them around randomly listening to what they sounded like. I thought that the water bottles “addressed themselves to my accoustic imagination” and by adding different levels of water to them it produced some semblance to the 12 tone system of tonality used in most music.
