Fluxus follow up and Sound Machine Projects:

Returning from break we spent some time reviewing the Fluxus projects with a focus on modernism and postmodernism. We explored Hassan’s list of terms and ideas associated with each era. In doing so I posed four questions: evaluate usefulness modernist ideas, critique postmodern ideas, critique modernist ideas, and evaluate usefulness of postmodern ideas. My hope with this is to make an end run around the question of why to study all this weird indeterminate stuff in the first place. This discussion gave way to the presentation of the sound machine or generative art project. Students are instructed to build a machine with a certain number of steps and a certain timeframe to create a “sound.” Once set in motion they are not to interfere with their machine, but many struggle with this. Generally about 50% of the machines don’t function as intended do to a variety of variables – but they still produce interesting results. In the first section they were playful and fun and often funny. The second section, although still creating some playful machines, didn’t quite synthesize the way the first section had. But, the work was generally good and interesting to watch. From there we segued into a deeper discussion of the projects and an introduction to generative art through Riley’s In C and Trisha Brown’s solo olos. This class was followed by a discussion of Steve Reich and Brian Eno discussing generative or process driven work. I do have the students listen to Reich’s “Come Out” all nearly 14 minutes of it – in order to hear it shift from one point to another. So, here we cycle back to discuss duration again. We also explored some of Eno’s work along with other artists. It feels like some of this material is starting to cohere for the students. New to the discussion this time is to lean into the modernist/postmodernist ideas a bit more and ask about employing indeterminacy – as Reich does with his tape loops – but then learning from that experience and weaving phasing back into a more traditional compositional approach. I feel this is a better representation of our world in which the two ideas co-exist. Next it’s on to the auto destruct project. Considerably mor complex than what we have seen so far, but based on the skills students have acquired so far in the term.