Interview with Ken Ueno; Techniques of the postmodern composition;

Tadas Vinokur techniques of the postmodern Ken Ueno interview Vinokur: I would like to begin with your attitude towards music. Messiaen coined the term ‘Black Masterpiece’ when referring to a composition, which possesses an iconoclast poignancy. (Lulu, Wozzek, Salome). The ability to challenge the tabooed stood as a metaphor for Modernism and its nominal dichotomy of low-culture versus high-culture. However, in postmodernism we have a synthesis of classical and ‘popular’ styles - Riley, Glass (minimalism) - which brings forth a feeling that the rivalry between kitsch and fine arts is eroding. Minimalist composers might be perceived less revolutionary, less abrasive… Ueno: I don’t know if I would necessarily make that distinction. Vinokur: Please, do disagree. Ueno: Classical Minimalism has its time-scale and pulse that is felt perhaps even more viscerally. The lack of structural weight placed on the movement of the pitches - as carriers of structure - might just be more representative of the visceral domain. In the light of this, rhythm and sound are the primary characters. The visceral intent of what might be called Minimalism will be probably more palpable with artists like Charlemagne Palestine and Tony Conrad. This kind of visceral emanation of their bodies is projected on the aura-exchanges. This could be more palpable/apparent with the hitherto aforementioned composers than it is with Steve Reich and Philip Glass. Vinokur: To some degree, my intention was to provoke you: by contesting the Adornian idea of low-high culture I sought to see how you would situate yourself on this dualistic paradigm. After all, you do often admit that your music is ‘weird’. Therefore, my question would be this: ‘weird’ as opposed to what? How do you situate your ‘weirdness’? Ueno: Sure, it’s culturally relative. Myself, I don’t think that it is ‘weird’. I’m just responding to cultural norms, especially the norms maintained in classical music conservatories where I often talk to the audience. But we’re living in the period in which there are more eccentric/laissez-faire individual spaces for music-making than anytime in the history of music. Or at least we are more aware of these niches through the internet, since the world is much closer together and more people can listen to different kinds of music. Therefore, ‘weird’ becomes less weird. Have you read Jacques Attall, ‘Political economy of Noise’? In the kind of marxian sense he outlines different stages of development of music. Last stage - Attall says - is the composition stage: it’s like a DIY culture of the moment of the spectacle. If we embrace that, then we can embrace all individual ‘weirdness’ Vinokur: In the light of Psychoanalytic perspective, let’s observe a listener (analyst) as he interacts with composition (analysand), this way music-listening is an engagement between two participants. In addition, Webern claims that sound of music is superfluous, meaning: ‘who cares how it sounds?!’ In other words, Webern seems to defraud the listener as an ultimate judge (analyst). Do you make concessions when you think that listener is nonetheless going to play the role of the judge? Do you make compromises so to render the composition more palatable? Ueno: It’s a complex thing. All I’m trying to do is to think about how it reflects to my experience as a listener. I think about how certain pieces of music changed my life and also how I’ve seen certain pieces of music - in the right context - change people’s lives. Those are the stakes, that’s all I’m trying to deliver to other people. Vinokur: I read an article - about you - that talks about the introduction (opening act, which is not made by you) to your concert. In that particular case, opening act was presented as bizarre and outlandish. Consequently, what you said is that it is important to prepare the person for the music; i.e., for the journey that he/she will partake. Do you think that listener ought to be prepared, or should he be shocked? When we go to contemporary concert-music concert - I went to Wolfgang Rihm’s concert last week - there’s a lot of polite ignorance, which welcomes the composition. We don’t get shocked. We learned enough about it. Ueno: Different things have different fuse-lenses for impact. Successful and unsuccessful things have to operate on different levels. This! *points at James Joyce’s ‘Finnigan’s wake’ print* There’s lushness and beauty and there are things that simply operate specifically to different potential readers. Once, I was thumbing through Finnigan’s wake and I saw the words ‘Animal Sundai’. When I was a kid - from when I was about one till about three - I lived in Sundai. James Joyce inscribed the names of local rivers from around the world and then the impact of reading those words peaked my interest. In other words, it resonated with my history. However, it resonated a little differently, because Sundai came forth in conjunction with ‘animal’, which in turn made me think of the landscape that is alive - a very earthquake-pro region of the world (Japan) - . In this way, ‘Animal Sundai’ became one of my titles. I’m trying to build on different levels of engagement, things that are part of the trust with the world and the audience. Another example: for forty years I was listening to the Beatles’ ‘Dear Prudence’ and only last year - when I was driving in a car and the EQ was just right - I started noticing the tambourine a little bit more. Do you remember the Tambourine? Vinokur: I don’t think so… Ueno: * moves his hands in the way that resembles a tambourine player, while singing* Dear prudence. . . . . Click! Dear prudence . . . . . Click! And then the chorus... It structurally facilitates the arrival at the word ‘prudence’. The timbre - of a tambourine - is quite nice because it is like a toy - it’s kinda youthfull. The austerity of it - punctuating the upbeat - is startling and unusual. Tambourine gives a feeling, punctuates the feeling of a character. Throughout the song he - the singer - is inviting her - Prudence - to play and shine on the upbeats. That blew my mind, because it took me forty years to hear that. After all this time, this thing was right in front of me. It made me revere the Beatles even more. Vinokur: That’s interesting. It made me think of my experience listening to Xenakis’ ‘Metastasis’, wherein the gradual/relentless growth arrives at the climax. When the apogee is reached there’s an austere sound of a woodblock, which unearths and punctuates the contours of the piece. Maybe this is similar. Vinokur: I watched the introductory video to your music, - the one with the megaphone. The most thrilling thing for me was your rhetoric apropos the megaphone. Special thing about it was not just that - as you claimed - it is a ‘prosthetic extension’, but your attitude towards the megaphone in general.You approached it in such an apathetic way; i.e., the notion of making music with megaphone sounded so natural - it must’ve been your second limb (megaphone). You said: “It allows me to make music when I exhale”. Therefore, it’s as obvious of an instrument in your music as violin or an oboe in western classical music tradition. After all, if the sound is what we are trying to emancipate, why would we even consider whether the megaphone is an appropriate instrument in an orchestra setting? You were so unapologetic and cocksure about the fact that it is a correct instrument for you - that it is truly a natural extension of your expression. Ueno: With instruments and orchestration, especially in the use of extended techniques in my lessons I often compare them to tarot cards. Because for tarot cards, apparently - for them to work you can’t purchase them. You can steal them, or after purchasing you have to go through this ritual of sleeping with them, having them on your body in order to condition them. All of this so that they would be a part of you. So whatever instrument you use: guitar, violin, or as a composer you may want to use certain sounds, you have to activate it into your life. And hopefully it becomes as natural as the extension of your limb. Vinokur: Something that I wanted to emphasize: it seems as though you’re focusing on sound, on the sonic texture. In the class we were listening to the composition by Grisey during which a person (violin player) is tuning his instrument. Even though tuning is a part of the piece, nonetheless people remarked that ‘it was too much’. But was it? It was the right technique to achieve that particular sonic quality - albeit that of the tuning. Ueno: I wonder what sound is and what the method is... Method could also be as important in the way it signifies. You know the group Matmos? It’s an electronic music duo, in their ‘A chance to Cut is a Chance to Cure’ album, each track features a different sample from an actual surgery. Drew Daniel, one of the members, has an article on ‘spectral hearing’. In the age of digital transformation, there’s a kind of casualness in the society - download everything, transform everything. I feel like people are inflating the biographical history by accumulating the material (they’re trying to reclaim the trace to the author) in this increasingly anonymous relationship between the sound and specific human beings. Similarly, I’ve been using electronics less and less because I am trying to champion specific human beings and their body as a primary agent. By extension, the audience’s presence becomes an imperative. There are things you can’t specifically experience through mediated means. All of this is a method. Vinokur: That taps into my following question. I want to begin examining your person-specific music by saying that it is truly a fascinating theoretical idea. That is to say, given the postmodern parameters in late capitalist society human being finds himself overwhelmed by information. Bureaucracy is abundant and every experience feels like it is constantly filtered by formal/soulless faculties. Wouldn’t that - person-specific music - be your way of saying that there is still an authentic/real experience? To put it differently, you render this authentic experience - person-specific music - very succinct in its temporality, therefore deeming listeners (who do manage to hear it) lucky. After all, person-specific performance might just happen once. It will not be reproduced, distributed, and capitalized. Person experiences it or doesn’t. Ueno: I think that this idea has been formed by my own relationship with music. And also - by my experiences with the foodie culture. Going to specific restaurants (Michelin) where people are working with special materials that are sourced locally - you can’t get any of this anywhere else. These people have developed a proper method of cooking with these materials and you have to go there, to this specific place. These are pilgrimages, you know?! In addition, my listening experience to Jimi Hendrix and Coltrane honour those individual people in the same kind of way. Makes you feel more alive If you can locate an experience which mobilizes an environment that is irreplaceable. If you really have to be at this specific restaurant or listen to just this specific person - it makes it special. By extension, I (first-person experience) matters more to the listener. ‘I have to be the one who is listening’. And in this world of increasing digitization, our lives become more anonymous every day - these individual pilgrimages, which honour specific people is a way to fight against that trend. Vinokur: Thank you, that’s exactly what I wanted to get at. My next question has to do with something that was bothering me for a long time. When I was writing my paper on Minimalism, I used to wonder whether the nomenclature/notation of western classical music impedes the creative process and free-expression of the contemporary composer… Ueno: Oh, yeah. I have a Youtube playlist, which is called ‘compositional research’. Here I’m playing different instruments - that's the first point of the syllabary of the score - and I talk about point two - graphics of the score. I make sounds by playing instruments and then i’m mapping these sounds with physical gestures. In reality, the notation alone doesn’t say how to speak it or how it sounds. Therefore, technology and Youtube videos extend the score in that sense. That is in terms of notation. On the one hand, all cultural aspects of the whole western classical music (and the technology of notation/of making sounds in this particular way) are neo-colonizing to the asian; i.e., I don’t belong to the dominant culture of that legacy. But on the other hand, it has allowed me to engage with music making in a particular kind of way, which I grew to enjoy. So all things are pharmakons; (my favorite word) i.e., they embody their own opposite. Vinokur: Thank you for your time. society of the spectacle Ezra Pound’s ‘Hugh Selwyn Mauberley’ summarizes poetry in 1920s London. He speaks about the ‘sublime’ that is to be maintained, the dead art of poetry that is to be resuscitated. In the light of socratic interrogation, the cunning question arises: where is this ‘sublime’? Where are these real experiences kept, which render poet’s reminiscence evermore vivacious. In other words, there surely is such an experience, which validates the undertaking of a poet. Where is this dead art of poetry then - what kind of hogwash-anomaly is this? Surely, this means that there are situations, which relinquish even the greatest acts of thought and conceptualization (Kant, Hegel, Galileo, Einstein). By the same token, we can surely postulate an occurrence, which is utterly spontaneous and eudaimonistic - ‘sublime’ -, locking future-and-present in place. One might call this situation a product of pure synchrony - the tabula rasa of all encounters. Ken Ueno says that this is all good and feasible, moreover - deliberately attainable. He calls this pure-encounter a person-specific composition. Ostensibly, this is a rather rudimentary method; i.e., composer writes a piece that is to be played once, in one space, by one performer. Ken Ueno claims - in Rousseau’s voice - that technology renders music-listening a decadent frivolity, which in turn accompanies the rest of the luxuries of civilized and modern peoples. Reproducibility and easy access deprives music-listening of the sanctified potency it once possessed. That is, when one had to visit the concert venue in order to experience music in all its spontaneity and unprecedented passion. Ken Ueno’s person-specific composition is - similarly - an encounter that commanders a person to become the first-person who listens. It stands abrasive to the organizable structures of capitalism. Correlatively, person-specific composition has nothing to do with the exchange value of a commodity, it will not even be listened to through headphones/speakers because it will fall short of digitizing. After all, we hear it (or not) once. Let’s put this into perspective - capitalism reached a level of accumulation Debord, Guy. The Society of the Spectacle. New York: Zone, 1994. Print. wherein commodities began to detach themselves from makers/producers. This is rather self-evident; i.e., overabundance of data renders the arrangement of data - and therefore agency of data - all the more impenetrable. Even a political actor is removed from his/hers own life - he is merely a spectator of his own drama. Following this, the authenticity of musical composition is no longer determined by its originality or by its intimacy vis-a-vis the composer. On the contrary, vigor of the composition is brought forth by its capacity to emulate the original-vigor. However, the concept of original-vigor (directly lived experience) might be perceived as a mere hallucination attributable to a naive mind, after all - we can only experience music through digitized means. Here we reach something of utmost value, namely the simulated Baudrillard, Jean. Simulations. New York City, NY, U.S.A.: Semiotext(e), 1983. Print. potential of a work of art. According to Ken Ueno, if music perpetually rests in mp3-players, CDs and streaming-apps the aesthetic encounter becomes simulated. By the same token, when composer finishes a song, he is expected to ‘drop’ it to the listeners as a single - this simplicity, in turn, creates an illusion of effortless reciprocity between composer and the listener. When listener needs - composer provides. This is, precisely, what we will call ‘simulation’. Simulation appears when an experience is hyporeal; i.e., when the whole goal of the artwork is to alienate the person. ‘When listener needs, composer provides’ - this means, that neither of the parties have to go through the grudge of the direct experience, they can instead enjoy the hollow spectacle of listener-composer. Consequently, the relationship of listener-composer is fittingly banal and elementary, in that what appears to the listener as music is simultaneously perceived as good and what appears as good music is simultaneously perceived as appearance. Music becomes a mere clickbait to be perpetually mutilated by the need to own and posses. In addition, there is no creative potential to be preserved, because both listener and a composer are specialists in conjuring up and immediately embezzling the spectacle. Ken Ueno’s approach is thence endogenously iconoclastic, bringing forth logistical complexities of the ominous direct-encounter. Let’s recall how in ‘A Clockwork Orange’ character Alex anticipates this problem, he says: “It’s funny how blood isn’t really blood until you viddy it on the screen”. Only difference is that Alex doesn’t posit the methodology, which would bring forth the real-blood - whereas Ken Ueno does. That is to say, listener experiences the composition in all its glory, impishness and ecstasy when he experiences it in a direct manner. If we are to listen to Baudrillard, such escapade - direct encounter - will seem out of reach, but the motivation nonetheless matters. It matters whether the composer - Ken Ueno - can establish a space that is not mediated and therefore not channeled to the global construction of the spectacle. In the like manner, it matters whether there are experiences worth mentioning and writing about - Pound pontificates about the ‘sublime’ because he was there to experience it. This is strictly a Postmodern aporia to which we are referring now. With this in mind, Adornian nominalism of high culture versus low culture is passe. Ken Ueno does not fight kitch and the rest of the societal vestiges, because he doesn’t have to. A rather peculiar attribute of the Postmodern cultural scene is that high-culture is manifested; i.e., it is not so esoteric any more. High culture is no longer the Other of the vulgar and the corny - avant-garde is acknowledged and even welcomed. However, this is done at a gruesome price: saturation of the ruling order and its ideology. Postmodern culture caters to the music-buff by claiming that everything is fair and accessible. Even the marginalized and undervalued styles/genres, - they are all one ‘mouse click’ away. In like manner, every listener is - by the same token - a music-buff since it is enough to engage in the praise of the spectacle (self-praise) to become what one might wish to be (music-buff). As long as the real-encounter of the work of art is mediated and digitized - hidden and repressed - everyone is a well-rounded critic. Ken Ueno hence puts forwards a space which speaks not about the experiences that could be delivered but rather about the experiences that will be delivered (person-specific music). These experiences will be full of artistic violence, which is always left unexpressed in the mediated format. Correspondingly, all the “unnecessary” social, luxurious, and thereby immoral fineries of the artificial encounter - in Ken Ueno’s opinion - will be stripped away by his person-specific music. Listener is not going to suffer from what Merleau-Ponty called the “phantom member” anymore (the feeling in a limb that has already been amputated), because the bogus encounter is exchanged for the real-encounter (limb really hurts all of a sudden). In the latter of which the specific environment plays a distinct role, as does the humanity of the performer and the temporality of the event. Sceptical mind might posit - however - that this person-specific phenomena is a fiction in itself. It is a detonator; i.e., person-specific music simulates the raison d’etre of Ken Ueno’s enterprise. However, compositional technique of person-specific music is not located at the dawn of Ueno’s creative history. It is rather located in prospect, as a compositional motivation. Any other artist might get subsumed by the retrospective gaze as it is anchored in the murky mullage of the past, however - Ueno motivates himself by creating an opportunity for the real-experience to happen eventually. This way he is able to disavow the sterile spectacle and rather strive for the pharmakon. Gertrude Stein once remarked: “every masterpiece came into the world with a measure of ugliness in it”. By the same token, Ken Ueno wants to put forward a masterpiece that is imminently unafraid to be violent and ugly. This is done so that you wouldn’t have viddy the blood on the TV,- because it’s right here and it’s real. pleasure of listening In Ken Ueno’s opinion, the relationship between composer and the listener is built upon trust. Composer is able to tap into listener’s idiosyncrasy so to spark a moment of catharsis. This means that composer’s craft is able to foster/kindle listener’s imagination in a moment of aesthetic agreement; i.e., composer puts forth the material with which listener can sympathize. In fact, sympathizing has nothing to with the experience Ken Ueno is talking about. People sympathise with many things: food they eat, TV shows they watch, etc. Conversely, Ueno is not interested in spoon-feeding listener with ‘pretty’ or pleasant music, but rather resonating with the listener in such a way, that listener’s life would be forever altered. To make this point, Ken Ueno describes his experience with music - and art at large - that was significant to him (Joyce; Beatles). If we look closely to what he is saying it becomes clear that his relationship with the artwork - whether it’s Joyce or Beatles - is replete with trial and error. He describes how he read Joyce and how he listened to the Beatles. It almost feels as if it is a laborious endeavor - this constant experiencing/spectating of art. However, if you pay enough attention - Ueno says -. moment arrives when author’s eccentricity complies with your own. This is the experience which comes about only through studious engagement with the art in question. Moreover, when this finally happens - author’s words are attended by the listener -, the real moment of catharsis is manifested. This is what Barthes calls jouissance Barthes, Roland, Richard Miller, and Richard Howard. The Pleasure of the Text. New York: Hill and Wang, 1975. Print.- a moment of sublime and visceral bliss, which comes hand-in-hand with the reciprocity of composer-listener. When Ueno is referring to Joyce and Beatles he treats them as creators of what Barthes calls a ‘writerly’ text. Writerly text is a type of an artwork which defrauds the literary codes and allows the reader to break out of his or her subject-position. The same happened to Ken Ueno when he was experiencing Beatles and Joyce, - lo and behold he noticed something (on the veneer of the artwork in question) which he had been eschewing before. What is special about the way in which he finally noticed the tambourine in ‘Dear Prudence’? The answer is rather banal in its simplicity - he listened to the song for 30+ years. The same thing happened with Joyce. Given how baffling of a literary endeavor ‘Finnigan’s Wake’ actually is, Ueno had to be very fastidious if he was to understand and appreciate it. Evidently, he fought and toiled with the text and finally stumbled upon the linguistic conjunction: ‘Animal Sundai’. In a rather contingent coincidence he reached an accordance - he located ‘Animal Sundai - with the author (Joyce). Ken Ueno was able to rake out something that was hidden and repressed before. The ritual - we use the word ‘ritual’ advisedly - of experiencing an art object is built upon the arbitrary episodes of listener's effort to discern the work of art. This ritual is perennial - at least in case of ‘writerly’ text - and very complex. By the same token, Ken Ueno wants to create music that is authentic enough so that listener would have to ritualize his experience with it and therefore - inevitably - arrive at the catharsis (even if it takes him/her 30+ years). spectral techniques of ‘Blood Blossoms’ In “Blood Blossoms” Ken Ueno: “Blood Blossoms”, score., Ken Ueno uses the compositional technique of spectralism in order to unshackle sonic experiences/qualities from equal-tempered physicality. Correlatively, from the point of view of a performer (pianist), notation becomes a fallible genus of performance practice. What is to be seen on the sheet music will be tantamount to most absurd phenomena of all. Namely, what is described (above the grand staff) as a ‘C# Drone’ has very little to do with the actuality of notational discourse. In other words, whereas the utilized pitch is unequivocal - piano commences with D, Eb, etc. - the resulting frequency (C# drone) acts as a pariah, which is left undefined. One might readily object to the latter; i.e., the C# is written in its phonogramatic form above the grand-staff, moreover - it is (C#) to be heard and perceived by the listener regardless of what the pitch on the stave is. This admixture, however, is of utmost relevance to the ensuing piece, the munificence of which we simply cannot overlook. The statement coming from the composer Ueno is clear: physical sonic-qualities of the sound will not be reprimanded by axiomatic notation, on the contrary - they will be equal reciprocals of the notation in question. To render this argument clear a very useful notion to utilize would be that of the ‘additive synthesis’. However, one should not be led astray here - we are not simply referring to the juxtaposition of sine-waves, which inaugurates complex periodic waves, we are rather talking about the the multitude of interactions resulting in, precisely - ‘additive synthesis’. In this case, ‘additive synthesis’ is articulated through ostensibly undefined C#. From here follows, that special sound color (timbre) is achieved through a very complex frequency-concoction of the pitches that are actually being played. The remarkable thing about this is that Ueno doesn’t want to hear the pitches as they are but rather he wants the audience to perceive the pitches as they should be. Strictly speaking, this taps into the idea that units - pitches produced via piano - are egalitarian in that they will create a sonic timbre that’s ultimately going to be of paramount value. Latter means that C# is synthetic i.e., it is obtained through licentious imperative rather than through authentic pitch. The complex sound (timbre) becomes an imposture - a pursuit of veneer, that is - as a technique - so crucial to this piece. In Blood Blossoms, the sound is unleashed in its capacity to stand as a fundamental for a totally different sound. For one, electric guitar is there only to buttress this methodology. More specifically, Electric Guitar harnesses sophisticated multiphonics so to delineate the notion that the instrument is never fully harmonic. Just like there is a sound of scraping the bow against strings in the case of the violin, so does Electric Guitar - it embraces all the vestiges that follow its over-saturated/exorbitant sound. One might deem this practise to be somewhat impressionistic, in that minuscule voices are there to create synthesis perceived from distance. interview with the composer Throughout the analysis of Ken Ueno’s techniques I have been referring to the real-encounter that I had with the composer. It was not mediated; i.e., two people were talking to each other. The intention of this paper is to show this experience - interview - as a motivation/catalyst for more interviews to be followed - more person-specific music to be performed.