Betsey Biggs: Noise to the Process

Slow preparation, fast execution.

Today's Oblique Strategy. Is this a hint?

Lots Going On

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Under Scan Portraits (2005)

I barely have time to write this, and will do more of a discussion and wrap-up after the weekend is over, but I wanted to mention some interesting things that are going on this weekend and beyond.

Mary Davis Upton, 1942-2006

My aunt, Mary Upton, passed away last weekend. She was smart as a whip and funny as hell. Without a college degree, she managed to become the dean of students at Harvard Law School. You could always count on Mary for a well-pointed observation and a laugh. For the last decade or more of her life she lived by the ocean in her beloved Rhode Island. Maresy, we will miss you.

The End of Irony?

I can't help but remember how there was all this discussion back then about "the end of irony" and the meaningfulness of the arts. What happened to that? I just re-read Alex Ross's essay following 9/11, about the meaningfulness that music had in the intensity of that time, on his blog, The Rest Is Noise..

Five Years Ago

Update: free Bargemusic concert info at bottom

Five years ago feels like a long time ago now. Five years also feels like yesterday. I don't really know what to write about 9/11, but I feel I should commemorate it here because it weighs on my heart. I was in Udaipur, India during 9/11, not all that far from the Pakistani border. I moved to New York a month later. Now when I peer at the skyline, my memory searches for the outlines of the towers, although I feel that more and more I can't remember exactly where they were.

Artist Fynnegan Sloyan can help you to remember. His project, WTC Outline, is a memorial project for the World Trade Center.

Rzewski quote

From Cage's book Notations:

“Don't make images. Create meaningful rituals.

Don't construct time: Interpret the moment.

Don't occupy space: Identify with it.

Don't play possibilities: Do the necessary.

Don't command obedience: Welcome the intruder.

Don't wear masks: Rejoice in nakedness.

Don't forge ecstasy: Return to zero.

Don't practice magic: Be automatic; Be nothing.

Make music with whatever means are available.”

Back to Website

www.betseybiggs.org.

And so it begins...

This is a test. A test to see whether or not keeping an online journal (aka blog) will be a help or a hindrance to my thesis writing process. I'm hoping that as I share fragments and ideas with the web, the web will share fragments and ideas with me.

Some of the ideas I am writing about, in a nutshell:

I am interested in the aesthetic experiences of letting go as a composer; in building systems rather than detailed instructions; in the meaning of interaction and collaboration; in the physicality of listening; in finding wonder in the mundane; in the relationship between sound and image; and in the end, what I'm really interested in is being surprised by beauty.

My main focus, I suppose, is on letting go of complete control, of letting a bit of noise into my signal, whether that noise comes from algorithms, improvisation, interaction or all-out collaboration. At the same time, it's important to me that my work maintain a structural integrity, which quite often takes the form of some sort of process. Hence the title of this blog.