Entrevista a Paulo Raposo / Interview with Paulo Raposo
2003/Sep/07
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My point of view is that of seeing image and sound as
two parallel realities, which may be contaminated, may develop in a disjunctive
way and not merely as illustration.
One supporting the other.
In the case
of cinema, the sound is in general always there to the detriment of the image,
while in other performance contexts the opposite happens - for example, in the
banal case of dance music, the so-called V.J. [Video Jockey]. What really interests me is developing
things that never meet. They don’t
meet, unless by virtue of what they carry within them in terms of meaning which
can be transmuted.
They don’t meet, but they move in parallel. It’s as in mathematics, the asymptotic
curve, which is two curves that get near and nearer each other but never
actually meet. I’m much more
interested in the space which is between the image and the sound than the
actual direct relationship and synchronicity of image and sound. That is to say, I’m not interested in
causal relationships, determinist in character, but I try to seek out things
that happen and come together within a work. What interests me is more the interval of décalage
between these two aspects.
I like to use banal images, footage of no great
complexity, almost raw. This can
be anything from home movies to images of trees, objects, or small events that,
shall we say, have absolutely no symbolic resonance or value. And then I like to move them, to take
hold of this near-insignificance of the image and transform them in order to
achieve something else.
With both sound and image, I tend to give pride of
place to the organic aspect, I try to play with the intensities of small
modules that intersect, without exactly referring to each other, though they
obviously use fragments, which are usually called samples, without any great
significance in themselves, because they don’t work as quotation. Thus, I seek in both sound and image to
take hold of all these fragments in order to establish them within a flux in
which the whole is greater than the parts.
Since I don’t use sounds and images as quotation, I
don’t feel the danger of illustration.
When I’m working on a piece, I don’t intend to illustrate anything. Even when there’s an explicit theme, as
in the piece On Paper, which was a commission from Pedro
Tudela based on the sounds of paper, what interests me there is not
illustrating in a literary fashion, but finding another kind of elective
affinity of secret correspondences and evocations that the material itself
brings with it. The “material”
side of the material perhaps suggests more to me than its context, or its value
as such.
Sound Particles
I don’t like things to be smooth. I’m always particularly attentive to
the texture and to the relationship of various textural elements that go
through the piece. I like to
establish a certain multidimensionality in which the texture is nor seen as a
particle, as a unit, but perhaps rather through multidimensionality of sounds
which are in a more or less unstable equilibrium.
Acousmatic Music: Refusal of visual means by the
super-concentration of sound.
I don’t agree that in acousmatic music there is
exactly a total refusal of the visual element; I think exactly the
opposite. For example, in
Parmegiani’s De Natura Sonorum, which I consider to be the
best acousmatic work, a model from nature is presented. But perhaps my interest is more
theoretically linked to Francisco Lopez, than the acousmatic music of today as
such.
I think that what is called acousmatic music,
especially that of French origin, and also from Quebec, because of the
French-speaking influence, has crystallized into some kind of cubism of
excessive transformation of sound, excessive disruptions and in a discourse
that very often, with the exception of some more intense and personal works, is
merely academic, especially in the obvious and manipulative character of sound
fragments. It’s in this sense that
I criticize it, because though there’s that break with image, it seems still to
have a very central role as metaphor.
There are quite a lot of titles that make reference to landscapes, to
water and other natural elements.
The father of that was Pierre Schaeffer: his first pieces have titles
such as Studies for Railway Tracks, Noise
Study; in other words, they are titles that have a very
visual charge still, connected to a kind of surrealism, a dream-like
transformation of the objects.
This is why I feel more interested theoretically in
the sound work of Francisco Lopez, since what interests him is to go beyond the
order of syntagmas and linguistics, with an approach that’s no longer
analytical – which is another criticism that might be made of acousmatic music,
too analytical and Cartesian – while other things, into which one may go more
deeply, allow a phenomenological immediacy, or the idea of a flux that is
played with in terms of perception and cognition.
Electroacoustics: Recorded and Real Time
I work with both recorded and real time electronics;
when I play live, I prefer to do it in real time rather than with a disc, for
example, because the object itself has a structure that I think is not worth
working with in real time, because otherwise it would become a document. But when I work in real time on disc, I
try out various things, the end result being a selection. This implies cuts, there’s an
indeterminate time for working.
But this is as Steve Lacy would say, if you ask what is improvised or
composed music in real time, you only have five or ten seconds to reply, but if
the question is put via e-mail, then you can do it again several times.
In other words, obviously we have structures to begin
with, or several structures: the structure of the software itself that one is
using; in my case I produce more or less my own software, depending on the
choices one makes in terms of treatment, in terms of generation, manipulation,
equalization, filtering... The
approach of the actual sounds already implies a choice. So things are not as aleatoric as that,
and then of course there are sound banks, in you are not working with someone
who is generating the actual sound.
Real time is more the last part of the process, in which we can
surprise; it depends. It depends
on the situation. I try to work in
accordance with each specific situation, for example, in the Vitriol
project, practically everything there is improvised.
I don’t mean by this that there is no electroacoustic
music in real time. In fact,
elecroacoustic is just the technical designation of this kind of music, and
doesn’t tell you anything about electroacoustic music. Real time is simply the way the music
itself is presented. It may be
composed, fixed, it may have variables that cross and are then worked in real
time. I must say that I am
somewhat allergic to standard definitions. I don’t think that they help us to orientate ourselves at
all; in particular they don’t help people who are beginning to work, because
they end up creating lanes in which one is restricted to one type of languages
which is then reproduced by various kinds of models which begin in the schools
and finish in the festivals, in the performance and circulation of the works
themselves.
Computer Music
I don’t write music for computer, computer music. We come back to the question of whether
computer music is only a part of the process. So the process transcends the instrument. I have no interest in doing things that
are too typified; in other words, the computer ends up being an interlocutor
which allows me to develop certain kinds of processes – processes and final
output. But previously, there has
been a great deal of work which is almost, shall we say, analogue. It’s work with, for example, a microphone
and other elements that don’t have to do with the computer. The computer is only the final output,
it’s what people see when it’s performed... improvised. The computer functions merely as an
instrument of improvisation. So
when my name appears on the list: “Paulo Raposo – Laptop”, it’s necessarily
incomplete, it’s just my stage instrument.
Sounds
I begin by collecting sounds from various
sources. Normally they are picked
up by a microphone. First there’s
the sound recording in different spaces with different acoustic properties,
whether architectonic or natural -
closed or open spaces. Others may
be synthesized sounds, made straight on the computer, and others can be
stranger still, as, for example, on this last disc which will come out, with
two pieces in which the basis is an amplifier that is not working properly, and
that, as one alters the volume, produces alterations of frequency. What I did was to record on a DAT a
series of takes with the amplifier’s dysfunction. I think it’s interesting to be open to the sounds that occur
or appear to me, without any pre-defined logic, on any kind of level, in other
words. The accidental dimension as
a factor that interests me for the sound discourse is symptomatic, as for
example in this case of the amplifier.
I limit myself merely to making use of these accidents when they happen,
and when I think that they make sense within the whole.
The conceptual aspect of music
Actually, I am concerned with articulating different
things and the sound material on the basis of ideas or concepts. It’s a habit that I have had since I
was small, of organizing lists and materials and making plans for them, which
sometimes don’t come about. I like
to organize myself mentally, without exactly creating a paradigm, but rather a
kind of shadow which will orientate the subsequent work, the concrete work of
composition, of sound recording and of thinking how the different parts may be
articulated.
There may be an influence from my study of philosophy,
because I try to give a meaning and a particular attention to the concepts, in
that they allow us to think. They
allow an opening, in which one may navigate, make connections, create fixed
points and at the same time mobile points. Perhaps it’s this interplay between these headlights and
what’s around them, what bubbles and what murmurs, what breathes and what’s
between things, that I consider very interesting.
Deleuze’s Rhizome
A concept is essentially an image. I think that the image of the rhizome
is very rich in possibilities for artistic creation, whatever the genre or
idiom, whether music, plastic or performance. So this still influences me, because this image is always
behind, it works as a line, a path that continues to illuminate what one does,
and works almost like critical reason.
The Graphic aspect of discs
I usually pay attention to the graphic aspect, for
example the disc covers, and I tend to favour a certain minimalism, which is
not forced. It’s not conceived so
as to project a kind of austere image, I merely want to places things in a
certain dimension which is not the dimension of exacerbating certain
aspects. I provide only the
essential information, without attributing to it an excessive importance. This comes perhaps from a reaction
against noise, against excess of information. It’s against information saturation, so it’s not exactly an
aesthetic element, but purification.
I look for simple things, with images that also favour the textural
side, but without being too romantic.
The concept of purification in music and sound
I never liked Wagner much, for example. I don’t like very romantic things, or
collages. I don’t like things that
can cause a profusion of elements.
In terms of contemporary music, this means that my approach is also not
the same. Perhaps I prefer Morton
Feldman to noisier, more verbose things.
Perhaps I place more value on minimal information, unless the data
justify more. Even in everyday
life, there is a great deal of information, much of it completely useless and
which serves only for self-repetition and to distract one’s attention.
At this time, when there are more and more discs and
books, more consumer objects in other words, I think it’s important to maintain
a kind of boundary, and to illuminate only what is essential.
Improvisation
As I said just now, I have a certain allergy to facile
designations. Now, if
improvisation has always been part of music, when we call it “improvisation”,
it’s all somewhat vague. If this
is an essential aspect of western classical music, from the time of Bach or
Liszt, or any other music, when things are crystallized, one creates a stamp
that doesn’t interest me personally.
Improvisation is one of the essential components of the act of creation,
but to conclude from that, that what I do is improvised music is to forget other
aspects.
Composer?
I don’t feel that I’m a composer in the academic
sense, but a composer in the way in which, for example, Franco Donatoni
presents himself, as a weaver or artisan, who weaves together various things,
yes. In this respect, the boundaries
are already too tenuous between the work of composition, but that’s not what I
mean. It’s difficult nowadays to
establish these boundaries so rigidly, because they are already so tenuous.